It is not okay to run an article written by the head of the anti-vaccination lobby. There is no debate.

TASHA David, head of the mostly-ridiculed and increasingly ignored Australian Vaccination-Skeptics Network, was today given a bizarre amount of oxygen in the Daily Mail to imply that vaccines caused a bunch of problems, including autism and ADHD, in her six eldest children.

Maybe Tasha has a point — maybe all creditable doctors and researchers and lab technicians and scientific journals and research ethics committees are collectively in cahoots to hide the terrible truth about vaccines from us. Sure, doctors mention SOME possible negative side-effects or problems caused by vaccines, just not things like autism and ADHD, because they’ve all agreed to keep that a secret in order to make huge profits from reasonably-priced, sometimes-even-free preventive medicine. The cads!

There’s no other side to the debate. In fact there’s no debate. A debate occurs when there are two different opinions of potentially comparable weight. Believing that vaccines cause autism in the face of zero reliable bits of evidence is like claiming that gravity is rubbish yet refusing to float upwards. Giving equal weight in the media to people who believe that vaccines cause autism is exactly the same as giving equal weight in the media to people who believe turtles are evil made manifest and will one day overthrow the human race and rule us all.

Late-night host Jimmy Kimmel recently suggested quite rightly that parents who don’t vaccinate their children might as well also encourage them to smoke, as they don’t have the right to pick and choose which bits of their doctor’s advice or reliable medical research to pay attention to.

I don’t think we should stop there, though.

If you disregard the medical advice to vaccinate your children, why even feed them? Sure, doctors say nutrition is important, but you clearly believe that doctors can’t be trusted, so let’s give that little tidbit of advice a suspicious sideways glance, too.

If you disregard the medical advice to vaccinate your children, for god’s sake don’t let them have toothbrushes or toothpaste. Surely dentists are in on the global conspiracy to make money from so-called ‘health and hygiene’ too. All you’d be doing by encouraging your children to brush their teeth is filling the pockets of Big Toothpaste.

If you disregard the medical advice to vaccinate your children, by all means send those kids straight out into the bright sunshine at midday and tell them to play their little hearts out. A good tan looks so healthy on the little mites, and also shows off this season’s junior fashions beautifully.

If you disregard the medical advice to vaccinate your children, might as well dispense with the inconvenience of seatbelts in the car, right? Those things chafe, and can potentially crease up this season’s aforementioned junior fashions.

If you disregard the medical advice to vaccinate your children, go right ahead and clean out your medicine cupboard. No sticking plasters, no kiddie Panadol, no cough mixture, and later, definitely no tampons or condoms. You can just never tell which bits of a doctor or chemist’s patois is questionable, so you might as well reject the lot, right?

Instead of taking the advice of people who have spent a lot of time on the internet only reading things written by people who share the same beliefs as them, perhaps take the advice of a doctor or scientist, who has been studying centuries of testable and repeatable medical research, and does not give a damn about your beliefs.

Is that still not obvious?

A Week in Science - Vaccination Myths2:47

When it comes to vaccinations, misinformation can kill. Find out the truth as we look at vaccination myths, including the mercury fear and autism claims.

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